The Devils' Share: The Podcast of Duke Magazine

Podcasts:

Pivot Point Part III: Aftermath. The Allen Building Takeover at Duke, Fifty Years Later | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:19:19

This is part three of a three-part series. In February 1969, African American students at Duke seized the Allen Building, the university's main administration building. A daylong standoff ended with the students leaving the building at the same moment that police in riot gear stormed the building. Police subsequently engaged crowds of students in its main quad, using clubs and tear gas. The protest and its results has left a long shadow at Duke. In 2019 celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the takeover brought original protesters back on campus for panel discussions, storytelling, and reconnection with old friends and places. Using those discussions, interviews, and archival tape, Pivot Point tells the story of the occupation and its aftermath. This is part three of a three-part series.

This is part two of a three-part series. In February 1969, African American students at Duke seized the Allen Building, the university's main administration building. A daylong standoff ended with the students leaving the building at the same moment that police in riot gear stormed the building. Police subsequently engaged crowds of students in its main quad, using clubs and tear gas. The protest and its results has left a long shadow at Duke. In 2019 celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the takeover brought original protesters back on campus for panel discussions, storytelling, and reconnection with old friends and places. Using those discussions, interviews, and archival tape, Pivot Point tells the story of the occupation and its aftermath. This is part two of a three-part series.

Pivot Point Part I: Boiling Point. The Allen Building Takeover at Duke, 50 Years Later | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:17:03

In February 1969, African American students at Duke seized the Allen Building, the university's main administration building. A daylong standoff ended with the students leaving the building at the same moment that police in riot gear stormed the building. Police subsequently engaged crowds of students in its main quad, using clubs and tear gas. The protest and its results has left a long shadow at Duke. In 2019 celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the takeover brought original protesters back on campus for panel discussions, storytelling, and reconnection with old friends and places. Using those discussions, interviews, and archival tape, Pivot Point tells the story of the occupation and its aftermath. This is part one of a three-part series.

Leslie Lewis '79 calls herself "one of the lost Dukies." In a world where our alumni offerers of advice in general suggest pursuing what interests you and letting things shake out from there, she looks back from her 60th birthday and wonders whether more planning might not have helped her. Mind you, she's accomplished great things, and her look backwards might suggest more about Duke alumni and their high standards than anything else. Her story ends our first season of The Devils' Share. Don't forget to email us at dukemag@Duke.edu if you have thoughts or suggestions for upcoming seasons or stories.

Jim Fleming '09 is an IT project manager but thinks his work came less from specific courses he took at Duke than from his background in coaching, plus "a combination of luck and hard work." It's rather a story.

It was professor Plum, with the candlestick, in the conservatory! Paul Kim, '97, is a forensic accountant, a career you might not have known exists. It does, and in this episode of our "Now What?" series, he describes his breakthrough moment and explains how he got there.

Reid Lewis '84 thought of himself as a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates guy who would grow an enormous company. He turned about to be better at the growing part than the enormous part and has become a specialist in entrepreneurship, and though he wouldn't mind a little more stability, he's found that he loves the challenge and personal nature of his work. For our fourth episode he explains how that all happened.

Tania Hossain Caravella '96 graduated from Trinity with a dual major in biology and history. But that wide range of study did not leave her feeling ready for anything; she instead felt almost clueless about what to do next. Things have worked out extremely well, and has a job she loves in research: "I ended up doing exactly what I'm meant to be doing." How'd she get there? Take a listen.

For the first series of The Devils' Share, a podcast from Duke Magazine, we focused on the topic we called "Now What?" -- about those early-career moments when you begin understanding how work ... works. For our first episode, Duke '82 engineering grad Danal Blessis shares stories of his career path and gives some wise advice on how to get where you need to be.

In Duke Magazine's Summer 2018 issue we covered the Duke Honor Council, a student organization working, as it has worked for years, to create an atmosphere of honor on the Duke campus. The piece inspired a response by an alumna, who shared with us a noteworthy expression of honor by an athlete and further tales of Duke's earliest run at an honor council.
Transcript:
TRACK
We’re an alumni magazine, so we hear from alumni. It’s a treat. Sometimes they tell us amazing stories. Here are a couple that came in response to our piece in the Summer issue about the Duke Honor Council.
ACTUALITY
For saved messages, press 1.
Saved messages
“Hi I read your wonderful article in the duke mag today i graduated in 1956 and I thought you’d be interested in a story”
In those days we helped tutor the athletic folk and there was a young man who was a football player who was injured and out that year.
TRACK
Actually he was a baseball player -- this would be William Donigan, who lettered in baseball and soccer after transferring to Duke from Notre Dame.
ACTUALITY
Anyway we helped to tutor him and he took a lot of the classes we took and one of them was Greek architecture, which didn’t come easy to him. SO the boys made up a cheat sheet and gave it to him the day of the test. And we went in, we all had our blue book, and at the end of the test And we said how did you do? And he said I turned in an empty blue book. We said you turned in an empty blue book? And he said yes I looked around the room and i was so honored by going to school with people like you, I couldn’t cheapen it by cheating.
TRACK
Your storyteller by the way is Maryann Stevens -- Maryann Dumont, if you knew her when -- and reading about the current honor council brought up those old memories.
ACTUALITY
I’ve told that story to all my children, my grandchildren, other people’s children, other people’s grandchildren, a truly truly wonderful young man. He did marry coach Murray’s daughter Cissie, and invited us all to the wedding. It was just a wonderful story, and you know, we always did have really outstanding people at Duke
TRACK
No doubt. Still on the topic of the honor council, in the story associate provost Noah Pickus described the importance of ritual -- things like public signings of the honor code -- to the success of an honor culture. As Stevens recalls, Elizabeth Hanford Dole clearly thought so when she stumped for an honor code during Stevens’ student years.
ACTUALITY
“I also remember and I believe it was Liddy Dole when she was coming to all the dorms, we came in after the dorm was closed, we came into the parlor and no lights were on it was just candles and she talked about what we should do about having an honor. And i do remember a couple of us said we would be glad to talk about it, but turn the lights on and ditch the candles. Anyhow I do remember so many wonderful wonderful things at Duke.”
TRACK
No doubt! Maryann has stories about meeting Eleanor Roosevelt, about serving in the White House visitors office under two presidents, and about writing “Breathing Easy,” a book about raising her asthmatic children. From our perspective, the point is: we love hearing from Maryann and people like her. From her perspective, the point is …
ACTUALITY
Going to Duke was just one of the most wonderful times of my life and I thought I’d pass those remarkable stories along. Bye bye.
You have no new messages. To send a message, press...
TRACK
Well, press 919-684-2863. Tell us a story and maybe we’ll share it.

At the closing events of the grand opening of the SNCC Digital Gateway (snccdigital.org/), a repository of audio, video, text, and photography about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC members raised their voices in song.
Transcript:
This is an audio postcard from Duke Magazine
[music]
Duke Libraries and the Center for Documentary Studies played a large role in the creation of the new SNCC Digital Gateway, an online repository of text, images, videos, and recordings documenting the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the national student-run group of civil rights activists in the 1960s (snccdigital.org). At closing events at Duke in March surrounding its creation, SNCC members talked about the importance of sharing their stories with today's student activists. They talked about not reinventing the wheel, about the importance of organizing, rather than merely mobilizing. The new website provides an almost limitless treasure of stories and examples. At the end of the first day of the closing conference an audience member noted that she had never seen so many SNCC members together without hearing them sing. Chuck Neblett, a member of the Freedom Singers, stood up, literally rising to the challenge. These are hard days. Here then is a gift of song from those who have been through hard days before.
NEBLETT:
I think we all got to sing.
[SONG: Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round...]
Audience member: One more!
[SONG and clapping: This little light of mine]
Audience member: You still got it!
TRACK: This has been an audio postcard from Duke Magazine.